- Helldivers 2 Is Filled With Odd Blue Lasers, Fans Have A Theory Kotaku
- Helldivers 2 CEO becomes a blue beam denialist as mystery snipers allegedly take potshots at the playerbase: ‘Blue beams aren’t real, they can’t hurt you’ PC Gamer
- Why Helldivers 2 Players Are Convinced the Illuminate Are Coming IGN
- Helldivers 2 grunts capture sightings of a returning faction while the game’s director desperately restarts the propaganda machine: “The Illuminate are already here” Gamesradar
- Helldivers 2 Players Are Convinced The Game’s Third Faction Has Secretly Arrived GameSpot
Tag Archives: Odd
Matthew Perry Remembered by ‘Odd Couple’ Co-Star Thomas Lennon: He ‘Was Always Trying to Get Better’ – Variety
- Matthew Perry Remembered by ‘Odd Couple’ Co-Star Thomas Lennon: He ‘Was Always Trying to Get Better’ Variety
- Matthew Perry’s Ex-Fiancee Says ‘He Caused Pain Like I’d Never Known’ Yahoo Entertainment
- Salma Hayek Mourns Matthew Perry: See Rare Footage From Fools Rush In Entertainment Tonight
- Salma Hayek Reflects On ‘Special Bond’ With Late Former Co-Star Matthew Perry HuffPost
- Lizzy Caplan Told Matthew Perry She Had ‘No Room’ in Her Life for Him After Their Breakup Showbiz Cheat Sheet
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Kevin Spacey’s Defense Tells Jury That Actor’s “Odd Life” Makes Him “Easy Target When Internet Turns Against You” in Closing Remarks – Hollywood Reporter
- Kevin Spacey’s Defense Tells Jury That Actor’s “Odd Life” Makes Him “Easy Target When Internet Turns Against You” in Closing Remarks Hollywood Reporter
- Kevin Spacey Defense Makes Closing Argument: ‘It Is Not a Crime to Have Sex, Even if You’re Famous’ Variety
- Kevin Spacey got away with sexual assaults because of his celebrity status: prosecutors Yahoo Entertainment
- Kevin Spacey’s lawyer says three of the actor’s sexual assault accusers are ‘liars’ The Washington Post
- Kevin Spacey trial: Actor was ‘tried by social media’, court hears BBC
- View Full Coverage on Google News
‘Potentially hazardous’ asteroid that recently zipped past Earth is an elongated weirdo with an odd rotation – Livescience.com
- ‘Potentially hazardous’ asteroid that recently zipped past Earth is an elongated weirdo with an odd rotation Livescience.com
- Oddly shaped asteroid once considered an impact risk for Earth races past the planet Space.com
- Curious ‘Oblong’ Object Detected on Radar Was Closely Tracked by NASA, Officials Say The Debrief
- This oblong asteroid will have a close encounter with Earth in 2040 Interesting Engineering
- Asteroid Nearly Three Times the Length of Statue of Unity Flew Past Us! | Weather.com The Weather Channel
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Australian nuclear body joins search for missing radioactive capsule
MELBOURNE, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Australia’s nuclear safety agency said on Tuesday it had joined the hunt for a tiny radioactive capsule missing somewhere in the outback, sending a team with specialised car-mounted and portable detection equipment.
Authorities have now been on a week-long search for the capsule which is believed to have fallen from a truck that made a 1,400 km (870 mile) journey in Western Australia. The loss has triggered a radiation alert for large parts of the vast state.
The capsule, part of a gauge used to measure the density of iron ore feed, had been entrusted by Rio Tinto Ltd (RIO.AX) to a specialist contractor to transport. Rio apologised on Monday for the loss, which happened sometime in the past two weeks.
The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency said it was working with the Western Australian government to locate the capsule. It added that the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation has also sent radiation services specialists as well as detection and imaging equipment.
The truck travelled from Rio’s Gudai-Darri mine, north of Newman, a small town in the remote Kimberley region, to a storage facility in the suburbs of Perth – a distance longer than the length of Great Britain.
State emergency officials on Tuesday issued a fresh alert to motorists along Australia’s longest highway to take care when approaching the search parties, as vehicles carrying the radiation detectors are travelling at slow speeds.
“It will take approximately five days to travel the original route, an estimated 1400kms, with crews travelling north and south along Great Northern Highway,” Department of Fire and Emergency Services Incident Controller Darryl Ray said in a statement late on Monday.
The gauge was picked up from the mine site on Jan. 12. When it was unpacked for inspection on Jan. 25, the gauge was found broken apart, with one of four mounting bolts missing and screws from the gauge also gone.
Authorities suspect vibrations from the truck caused the screws and the bolt to come loose, and the capsule fell out of the package and then out of a gap in the truck.
The silver capsule, 6 mm in diameter and 8 mm long, contains Caesium-137 which emits radiation equal to 10 X-rays per hour.
People have been told to stay at least five metres (16.5 feet) away as exposure could cause radiation burns or radiation sickness, though driving past the capsule is believed to be relatively low risk, akin to taking an X-ray.
Reporting by Melanie Burton in Melbourne; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Edwina Gibbs
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Rio Tinto apologises for loss of tiny radioactive capsule in Australian outback
MELBOURNE, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Rio Tinto Ltd (RIO.AX) apologised on Monday for the loss of a tiny radioactive capsule that has sparked a radiation alert across parts of the vast state of Western Australia.
The radioactive capsule, believed to have fallen from a truck, was part of a gauge used to measure the density of iron ore feed which had been entrusted to a specialist contractor to transport. The loss may have occurred up to two weeks ago.
Authorities are now grappling with the daunting task of searching along the truck’s 1,400 kilometre (870 mile) journey from north of Newman – a small town in the remote Kimberley region – to a storage facility in the northeast suburbs of Perth – a distance longer than the length of Great Britain.
The task, while akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, is “not impossible” as searchers are equipped with radiation detectors, said Andrew Stuchbery who runs the department of Nuclear Physics & Accelerator Applications at the Australian National University.
“That’s like if you dangled a magnet over a haystack, it’s going to give you more of a chance,” he said.
“If the source just happened to be lying in the middle of the road you might get lucky…It’s quite radioactive so if you get close to it, it will stick out,” he said.
The gauge was picked up from Rio’s Gudai-Darri mine site on Jan. 12. When it was unpacked for inspection on Jan. 25, the gauge was found broken apart, with one of four mounting bolts missing and screws from the gauge also gone.
Authorities suspect vibrations from the truck caused the screws and the bolt to come loose, and the radioactive capsule from the gauge fell out of the package and then out of a gap in the truck.
“We are taking this incident very seriously. We recognise this is clearly very concerning and are sorry for the alarm it has caused in the Western Australian community,” Simon Trott, Rio’s iron ore division chief, said in a statement.
The silver capsule, 6 millimetres (mm) in diameter and 8 mm long, contains Caesium-137 which emits radiation equal to 10 X-rays per hour.
Authorities have recommended people stay at least five metres (16.5 feet) away as exposure could cause radiation burns or radiation sickness, though they add that the risk to the general community is relatively low.
“From what I have read, if you drive past it, the risk is equivalent to an X-ray. But if you stand next to it or you handle it, it could be very dangerous,” said Stuchbery.
The state’s emergency services department has established a hazard management team and has brought in specialised equipment that includes portable radiation survey meters to detect radiation levels across a 20-metre radius and which can be used from moving vehicles.
Trott said Rio had engaged a third-party contractor, with appropriate expertise and certification, to safely package and transport the gauge.
“We have completed radiological surveys of all areas on site where the device had been, and surveyed roads within the mine site as well as the access road leading away from the Gudai-Darri mine site,” he said, adding that Rio was also conducting its own investigation into how the loss occurred.
Analysts said that the transport of dangerous goods to and from mine sites was routine, adding that such incidents have been extremely rare and did not reflect poor safety standards on Rio’s part.
The incident is another headache for the mining giant following its 2020 destruction of two ancient and sacred rock shelters in the Pilbara region of Western Australia for an iron ore mine.
Reporting by Melanie Burton; Editing by Edwina Gibbs
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Steam On Linux Metrics End Out 2022 With Some Odd Numbers
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Valve has just published the Steam Survey results for December 2022 that come in at a bit of a surprise.
As published in early December and remained the numbers up until today, the November 2022 metrics put Steam on Linux at a 1.44% marketshare as a 0.16% increase over October. The November results pointed toward gains in the Linux marketshare as a result of increased Steam Deck usage based on the SteamOS Holo and AMD Custom GPU 0405 data points.
Steam Linux percentages for November 2022.
Steam Linux percentages for December 2022 with a “weird” percentage increase for month-over-month.
But making things odd is the December 2022 report putting the Linux marketshare up 0.10%, but the percentage marketshare at 1.38%… Or 0.06% lower than than November’s numbers. So it’s yet another case of re-calculated numbers or other oddities from the Steam Survey results.
The original November data put macOS at 2.45% and Windows at 96.11% while the newly-published December data has Windows at 96.15% with a reported 0.35% decline and macOS at a 0.25% increase to 2.48%. Again, not aligning at all from Valve’s prior month data.
Making the December numbers all the more odd is that when pulling up the Linux-only survey data it shows a 0.91% decline for SteamOS Holo (though a 0.77% increase to the Flatpak Steam), the AMD CPU marketshare falling by 0.84%, and the AMD Custom GPU 0405 percentage falling by 0.90%. Or in other words, the Steam Deck marketshare of Linux gamers contracting by just under 1% for the month of December. That’s rather unusual considering the success of the Steam Deck and Valve continuing to ship vastly more units each week and it being the main driver right now for Linux gaming adoption.
So either the random element of the Steam Survey selection was rather bonkers for December or there is other odd things happening with the Steam Survey that seem to happen every so often. We’ll see if the numbers get revised in the days ahead while for now you can find the current data at SteamPowered.com.
Keystone cleanup turns remote Kansas valley into a small town
WASHINGTON, Kan., Dec 18 (Reuters) – Farmer Bill Pannbacker got a call earlier this month from a representative from TC Energy Corp , telling him that its Keystone Pipeline, which runs through his farmland in rural Kansas, had suffered an oil leak.
But he was not prepared for what he saw on his land, which he owns with his wife, Chris. Oil had shot out of the pipeline and coated what he estimated was nearly an acre of pasture uphill of the pipe, which is set into a valley.
The grass was blackened with diluent bitumen, one of the thickest of crude oils, which was being transported from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
The rupture on Dec. 7 is the third in the last five years for the Keystone Pipeline, and the worst of the three – more than 14,000 barrels of crude has spilled and cleanup is expected to take weeks or months.
TC has not said when repairs could be completed and a 96-mile (155-km) segment of the pipeline will restart. Crews will remain busy on site through the holidays and completion of the cleanup depends on weather and other factors, the Canadian company said in a statement.
“We are committed to restoring the affected areas to their original condition or better.”
BEEHIVE OF WORKERS
Keystone’s two previous spills happened in unincorporated areas in North Dakota and South Dakota. And while the city of Washington, Kansas, is small with just over 1,000 residents, it is surrounded by farms where wheat, corn, soybeans are planted and cattle are raised. The spill in Washington County affected land owned by several people.
The once-quiet valley is currently a construction site buzzing with some 400 contractors, staff from pipeline operator TC Energy, and federal, state and local officials. They are working into the night, leaving a glow from the high-intensity lamps seen from miles away.
Cranes, storage containers, construction equipment and vehicles stretch for more than a half mile from the site of the rupture. The valley has become almost a small town, with several Quonset-style huts erected for workers.
Aerial photos showed a large, blackened swath of land that almost looks like an airborne object is throwing a shadow over the land. Pannbacker said that pasture was used for cattle grazing and calving, but with calving season over, there were no livestock there at the time.
The oil-blackened grass on the land, which is owned by Pannbacker and his sisters as part of a family trust, is now completely gone. It was scraped away and is now confined to a giant mound of dirt that is noticeably darker at the bottom. But oil droplets on plants further up the hill were still visible.
WIDER GROUP AFFECTED
Living in rural Kansas, the Pannbackers are used to preparing for harsh weather, but not an oil spill. Residents have been largely unconcerned despite the accident, even as the area will resemble a work site for the near-future.
“How many people have experienced an oil spill? Who knows what it’s like?” said Chris Pannbacker. “It’s not like a tornado or a natural disaster.”
Kansas State Representative Lisa Moser in a Facebook post said there are 14 landowners who are being compensated for either the spill or the use of their property during cleanup.
TC said it is discussing compensation with landowners but would keep details private. The company said it has stayed in regular contact with landowners. Pannbacker said TC has not yet discussed compensation with them yet.
Pannbacker says he does not expect the grass on the pastureland to return for at least two or three years; there is a well site on the pasture used for the cattle that they will not be using either.
Reporting by Erwin Seba in Washington, Kan.; additional reporting by Rod Nickel; writing by David Gaffen
Editing by Marguerita Choy
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
World’s largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium bursts in Berlin
BERLIN, Dec 16 (Reuters) – An aquarium in Berlin that was home to around 1,500 exotic fish burst early on Friday, spilling 1 million litres (264,172 gallons) of water and debris onto a major road in the busy Mitte district, emergency services said.
Around 100 emergency responders rushed to the scene, a leisure complex that houses a Radisson hotel, a museum, shops and restaurants as well as what the DomAquaree complex says is the world’s largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium at 14 metres (46 ft) in height.
“In addition to the unbelievable maritime damage… two people were injured by glass splinters,” Berlin police said on Twitter.
A spokesperson for the Berlin fire brigade said emergency responders had been unable to access the ground floor of the building due to the debris. Search and rescue dogs were being sent to the scene, he added.
[1/7] Emergency services work on a street outside a hotel after a burst and leak of the AquaDom aquarium in central Berlin near Alexanderplatz, with water poured out onto the street, in Berlin, Germany, December 16, 2022. REUTERS/Michele Tantussi
The spokesperson said it was still unclear what had caused the aquarium to burst. Neither the fire brigade nor the police commented on the fate of the fish.
Around 350 people who had been staying at the hotel in the complex were asked to pack their belongings and leave the building, the fire brigade spokesperson said.
Buses were sent to the complex to provide shelter for people leaving the hotel as outside temperatures in Berlin were around -7 degrees Celsius (19.4°F), police said.
Emergency services shut a major road next to the complex that leads from Alexanderplatz toward the Brandenburg Gate due to the large volume of water that had flooded out of the building.
Writing by Rachel More and Maria Sheahan, editing by Kirsti Knolle, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Gareth Jones
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Japanese billionaire Maezawa picks K-pop star TOP, DJ Steve Aoki to join SpaceX moon trip
TOKYO, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa revealed on Friday that K-pop star TOP and DJ Steve Aoki will be among the eight crew members he plans to take on a trip around the moon as soon as next year, hitching a ride on one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets.
Maezawa bought every seat on the maiden lunar voyage, which has been in the works since 2018 and would follow his trip on a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) for a 12-day stint last year.
The picks were announced by Maezawa on Twitter and at a website for what he dubbed the #dearMoon Project.
The fashion tycoon and his crew would become the first passengers on the SpaceX flyby of the moon as commercial firms, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, usher in a new age of space travel for wealthy clients.
The mission aboard SpaceX’s Starship vehicle is scheduled to take eight days from launch to return to earth, including three days circling the moon, coming within 200 kilometres from the lunar surface. Though the flight was scheduled for 2023, it is facing delays due to ongoing tests of the spacecraft and its rockets.
Like fellow billionaire Musk, Maezawa has a flare for promotion and an infatuation with Twitter — he has boasted to holding the Guinness world record for the most retweeted post, when he offered a cash prize of 1 million yen ($7300) to 100 winners for retweeting it.
[1/4] Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa reacts as he speaks with his family after donning space suits shortly before the launch to the International Space Station (ISS) at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, December 8, 2021. REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov
Maezawa used the micro-blogging site to recruit eight crew members from around the world to join him on the moon trip, saying 1 million people had applied.
TOP, the stage name of Choi Seung Hyun who broke out with the K-pop group Big Bang, is among the higher profile members selected, along with Aoki, a Japanese-American musician and DJ whose father founded the Benihana restaurant chain.
“I feel great pride and responsibility in becoming the first Korean civilian going to the moon,” TOP said in a video posted after the announcement.
Indian actor Dev Joshi was also among the picks for the group, comprised largely of artists and photographers. U.S. Olympic snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington and Japanese dancer Miyu were named as backup crew members.
Maezawa, 47, flagged an update to the lunar expedition on Monday, tweeting he’d held an online meeting with Musk and was readying a “big announcement about space.”
Maezawa made his fortune founding the online fashion retailer Zozo Inc (3092.T), in which Softbank Group Corp’s (9984.T) internet business is now the top shareholder.
($1 = 136.7600 yen)
Reporting by Rocky Swift; Editing by Leslie Adler and Sandra Maler
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.